Living as a Foretaste of God’s New Creation

Christians have always proclaimed that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. We celebrate His resurrection at Easter, confess it in our creeds, and speak of it as the foundation of our hope. Yet the resurrection and the Church belong together in a way we sometimes fail to appreciate. If God has already begun His promised new creation through Jesus Christ, should not the community that confesses Him as Lord offer the world some recognizable glimpse of that coming renewal?

For many Christians, the resurrection is primarily a promise that death is not the end. Because Jesus lives, we too shall live. This is certainly true, but it is not the whole story. The New Testament presents the resurrection as something far more consequential. It is the decisive beginning of God’s promised renewal of creation.

If that is so, then the resurrection should do more than assure us of a future life. It should transform our understanding of what the Church is called to be in the present.

After all, if God has already inaugurated His new creation through the resurrection of Jesus, should not the community that confesses Him as Lord offer the world some recognizable glimpse of that promised future?

The Resurrection and the Church: A New Creation Has Begun

Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 15 is particularly important. He does not describe Jesus’ resurrection as an isolated miracle, however extraordinary. Instead, he identifies Christ as the firstfruits of those who have died (1 Corinthians 15:20).

The imagery is agricultural. The firstfruits are the beginning of a harvest that has yet to reach completion. They belong to the same harvest and anticipate what is still to come.

For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus is therefore inseparable from the future resurrection of His people. What God accomplished in the Messiah anticipates what He will accomplish for those who belong to Him.

But Paul’s vision extends beyond individual resurrection. He looks toward the defeat of every hostile power, culminating in the destruction of death itself. The resurrection belongs to God’s larger purpose of bringing creation under the life-giving reign of the Messiah.

Romans 8:18–25 expands this horizon even further. Paul portrays creation itself as groaning, awaiting liberation from its bondage to decay. The redemption of humanity and the liberation of creation belong together within God’s promised future.

This is a profoundly different vision from the popular assumption that Christianity is primarily about escaping the earth and spending eternity somewhere else.

The biblical hope is not the abandonment of God’s creation but its renewal.

Revelation 21 brings this vision to its magnificent conclusion. The holy city descends from heaven, and God’s dwelling is established among humanity. Death, mourning, crying, and pain will no longer define existence.

The direction of the imagery matters. The story does not end with redeemed humanity permanently departing from creation. It ends with God making His dwelling among His people in a renewed world.

Yet this future has already begun through the resurrection of Jesus.

The Church therefore lives between the decisive beginning of God’s new creation and its promised completion.

We Are Not Yet What We Shall Be

This distinction between the already and the not yet is essential.

The resurrection does not mean that God’s kingdom has arrived in its fullness. Death still claims lives. Injustice continues to wound communities. Creation still groans, and even those who possess the Spirit await the redemption of their bodies.

Paul himself makes this clear in Romans 8. Believers possess the firstfruits of the Spirit, yet they continue to groan as they await their final adoption and bodily redemption.

Christian hope therefore cannot be confused with triumphalism.

We should not pretend that the Church has already overcome every expression of evil simply because it belongs to the risen Christ. Nor should we imagine that sufficient faith, impressive religious activity, or successful institutional programs will eliminate suffering before God’s promised consummation.

Nevertheless, the unfinished character of redemption does not excuse passivity.

The Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is already at work among His people. Through the Spirit, believers participate in the life of the risen Messiah and are being transformed into His likeness.

This is why Paul can declare that anyone in Christ belongs to new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The statement is not merely about an individual’s improved religious outlook. Within its surrounding argument, Paul connects God’s reconciling action in Christ with the formation of a community entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation.

God has acted decisively, and those who belong to Christ are called to live according to the new reality His resurrection has inaugurated.

The Church is not the completed new creation. But it is called to become a living witness to the new creation God has promised.

A New Humanity in a Divided World

One of the most striking implications of the gospel concerns the boundaries that divide human beings.

In Ephesians 2:11–22, Paul describes the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles through Jesus Christ. Those once separated by inherited religious and social distinctions are brought near through the Messiah.

Christ creates one new humanity, reconciling both groups to God in one body through the cross.

This is not merely an invitation for different groups to tolerate one another while preserving every barrier that previously kept them apart. Paul describes a new covenant community constituted through the reconciling work of Christ.

Similarly, Galatians 3:28 declares that distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female do not determine one’s belonging to Christ.

These differences do not simply disappear. Human beings retain their histories, identities, and particular circumstances. Yet such distinctions no longer establish different degrees of access to God’s covenant family.

If this is what God has accomplished through the Messiah, then the Church should be a community in which inherited barriers are continually challenged by our shared belonging to Christ.

This has implications for how Christians treat people who differ from them in ethnicity, social standing, economic circumstances, or theological understanding.

Unity does not require the abandonment of truth. Neither does it demand that Christians pretend every disagreement is insignificant.

But the Church must resist turning every difference into a reason for exclusion.

A community that proclaims reconciliation while cultivating suspicion, rivalry, and contempt toward other believers offers a distorted picture of God’s promised future.

The new humanity inaugurated through Christ should become visible in the relationships of those who bear His name.

The Kingdom Is Revealed Through Self-Giving Love

Yet reconciliation alone does not exhaust the Church’s calling. The character of its common life must also reflect the Messiah through whom God’s new creation has begun.

Jesus provides the decisive pattern in Mark 10:42–45. When His disciples struggle with questions of greatness and authority, He contrasts the dominating practices of worldly rulers with the kind of leadership expected among His followers.

Those who desire greatness must become servants. Those who wish to be first must become servants of all.

Jesus grounds this reversal in His own mission. The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many.

This is no minor adjustment to ordinary leadership principles. It is a fundamental reorientation of how authority is understood within the messianic community.

The cross reveals that God’s saving power does not operate according to the world’s familiar patterns of domination and self-preservation.

Paul develops the same conviction in Philippians 2:5–11. Christ’s self-giving becomes the pattern for relationships among believers.

The Church therefore cannot treat authority as a personal possession that elevates its leaders above accountability.

Its ministries exist to equip God’s people, protect the vulnerable, and build up the body toward maturity in Christ.

Whenever spiritual authority becomes an instrument of manipulation, intimidation, or institutional self-protection, the Church contradicts the very Lord whose authority it claims to represent.

The new creation is not anticipated through religious domination. It becomes recognizable through relationships transformed by Christlike love.

Small Acts of Mercy Are Not Small in God’s Kingdom

We should also resist the assumption that witnessing to the new creation requires spectacular achievements.

The ministry of Jesus was filled with acts of mercy that might appear ordinary when measured against the ambitions of political and religious institutions.

He touched those considered unclean, welcomed those excluded from respectable society, fed the hungry, healed the sick, and restored dignity to people whose suffering others had learned to overlook.

These actions were signs of God’s kingdom.

They did not eliminate every disease, end every injustice, or abolish death throughout the world. Yet they revealed the character of the reign that had come near in Jesus.

Every healing pointed beyond itself toward the final restoration of creation. Every act of compassion disclosed something of the mercy that would characterize God’s promised future.

The Church is called to continue bearing witness to that same kingdom.

When a congregation provides food for a struggling family, accompanies someone through illness, welcomes a person previously excluded, or helps restore a broken relationship, it is not bringing the completed kingdom into existence.

But it is offering a glimpse of the world God intends to renew.

Such acts should never become substitutes for confronting the conditions that produce suffering. Mercy and justice belong together. Feeding the hungry is an expression of love, but so is challenging practices that perpetuate hunger.

The prophets understood this long before the coming of Jesus. Amos condemned religious observance divorced from justice. Isaiah challenged worship that coexisted with oppression and neglect of the vulnerable.

The resurrection does not set aside these prophetic concerns. It places them within the larger horizon of God’s promised restoration.

Small acts of mercy matter because they bear witness to a future that God Himself has guaranteed through the resurrection.

Their significance is not measured merely by their immediate results, but by their relationship to the purposes of the risen Christ.

Creation Is Not Disposable

The Church’s witness must also extend beyond human relationships.

If God’s promised future includes the liberation of creation, then the natural world cannot be treated as spiritually irrelevant.

The earth is not merely a temporary stage upon which the drama of salvation unfolds before God finally discards it.

Creation belongs to Him.

Genesis 1 declares its goodness, while Psalm 24 reminds us that the earth and everything in it belong to the Lord.

Romans 8 presents creation as sharing in the hope associated with the glorification of God’s children.

This does not mean that Christians can accomplish the renewal of creation through environmental programs or political action. The final restoration remains God’s work.

Nevertheless, the promise of God’s future does not release us from responsibility for the present.

The Church should encourage wise stewardship, restraint, and concern for communities whose lives are threatened by environmental degradation.

Such responsibility requires more than invoking biblical language. It also demands sound judgment, attention to scientific evidence, and consideration of the social consequences of our decisions.

Our hope is not that humanity can save the world through its own achievements. Our hope is that God will renew His creation.

Precisely because creation has a future in God’s purposes, it deserves our responsible care today.

When the Church Fails to Reflect Its Future

We must acknowledge something uncomfortable. The Church has not always provided a convincing foretaste of God’s new creation.

Its history includes remarkable examples of courage, compassion, learning, generosity, and faithful witness. Yet it also contains episodes of violence, exclusion, exploitation, and the misuse of religious authority.

Even today, Christian communities sometimes reproduce the divisions and injustices they are called to challenge.

This should not surprise us entirely. The Church remains a community of people who are still undergoing transformation. The Spirit’s work has begun, but believers have not yet reached the fullness of what they shall become.

Nevertheless, our imperfection must never become an excuse for complacency.

The New Testament repeatedly calls believers to repentance, correction, reconciliation, and growth toward maturity.

The promise of new creation establishes a standard against which the Church must continually examine its own life.

Where there is abuse, the Church must pursue truth and accountability rather than concealment. Where there is division, it must seek reconciliation without sacrificing justice. Where there is indifference toward suffering, it must recover the mercy of Christ.

The Church does not need to pretend that it is already the perfect expression of God’s kingdom.

It needs the humility to acknowledge where it has failed and the faithfulness to allow the gospel to correct its course.

A genuine foretaste is not a claim to perfection. It is a recognizable witness to the reality still awaiting its final fulfillment.

Our Labor Is Not in Vain

Perhaps the most remarkable conclusion to Paul’s great resurrection chapter appears in 1 Corinthians 15:58.

After proclaiming Christ’s victory over death and the promised resurrection of God’s people, Paul urges believers to remain steadfast and devote themselves fully to the work of the Lord, knowing that their labor is not in vain.

The connection is profoundly important.

Paul does not conclude his exposition of resurrection by encouraging believers to withdraw from the concerns of the present world.

He calls them toward faithful work.

Because death will not have the final word, what believers do in the service of the risen Lord possesses enduring significance.

Our efforts remain limited. We cannot heal every wound, reconcile every conflict, or remove every injustice. Much of our work may appear insignificant when measured against the enormity of human suffering.

But the resurrection assures us that God’s purposes are not ultimately defeated by the brokenness of the present age.

This does not guarantee that every project undertaken in God’s name will succeed or endure. Christian institutions and their achievements remain subject to judgment.

Rather, it assures us that faithful labor undertaken in the Lord is not ultimately meaningless.

The future belongs to God, and the resurrection has already revealed the direction of that future.

We work, therefore, not because we imagine that human effort can establish God’s kingdom, but because God has already acted decisively through Jesus Christ.

Our responsibility is to bear faithful witness to what He has begun.

A Foretaste of What Is Coming

The Church’s vocation becomes clearer when we understand the resurrection within the larger biblical story.

God has raised Jesus from the dead. Through Him, the promised new creation has begun. The Spirit is already at work forming a people who belong to the coming age, even while they continue to live amid the struggles of the present one.

This does not make the Church the kingdom of God in its completed form.

It makes the Church responsible for bearing witness to that kingdom.

A Christian community should therefore be a place where forgiveness is practiced without abandoning accountability, where authority takes the form of service, where material blessings create responsibility toward those in need, and where people divided by the world’s familiar boundaries discover a new belonging in Christ.

It should be a community that refuses to glorify suffering but remains present with those who suffer. It should proclaim resurrection hope without neglecting the wounded, the hungry, and the forgotten.

Above all, it should reflect the character of Jesus, whose self-giving love reveals what God’s reign looks like.

We will not embody this calling perfectly. Our communities will continue to require repentance, patience, and the transforming work of the Spirit.

But that is no reason to abandon the calling.

The resurrection assures us that God’s promised future is not an illusion. It has already begun in the crucified and risen Messiah.

Perhaps the Church’s most compelling witness, then, is not found in the grandeur of its buildings, the sophistication of its programs, or the influence of its leaders.

It is found wherever the life of Jesus becomes recognizable through the ordinary faithfulness of His people.

If we truly believe that God is making all things new, then the Church should offer the world some glimpse of what that renewal means.

Not because we have already arrived, but because Christ has been raised.

And because He has been raised, the future God has promised is already shaping the life we are called to live today.

For Further Reading

• 1 Corinthians 15:20–28, 51–58 — Christ’s resurrection, the final defeat of death, and the enduring significance of Christian labor.
• Romans 8:18–25 — Creation’s groaning and the promised redemption of the body.
• 2 Corinthians 5:14–21 — New creation and the ministry of reconciliation.
• Ephesians 2:11–22 — One new humanity formed through Christ.
• Revelation 21:1–5 — God’s dwelling with His people in the renewed creation.

Further theological study

• Gorman, Michael J. Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015.
• Wright, N. T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York: HarperOne, 2008.

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